One winter morning, the two of us--both postdoctoral fellows in
medical humanities and bioethics--gathered with a handful of
reproductive science graduate students in the lab to watch a
demonstration on making alginate beads. Due to their three-dimensional
nature, the beads are capable of holding ovarian follicles--the beads
act as though they were a small ovary. The scientists in the lab have
managed to mature the follicles maintained in the beads into eggs,
fertilize these eggs, and produce the birth of live mice. This research
was begun in an effort to develop a means of gathering ovarian follicles
from young human cancer patients before they commence cancer treatment
that may result in their infertility, thus preserving parts of their
ovaries for later use in in vitro fertilization.

But the point of this paper is what else happened that day in the
lab. The graduate students and the fellows began talking about the
inability of the lab to extend the experiment to see if human ovarian
follicles are similarly capable of maturing into eggs that would be
fertilizable. As the recipient of a grant from the National Institutes
of Health, the lab must abide by the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, which bans
federal funding for research involving human embryos and parthenotes. A
parthenote is an egg that begins dividing as though it were fertilized
even though fertilization has not occurred. Eggs can be induced to
develop into parthenotes (a process known as parthenogenesis) in the
absence of sperm by several different chemical and mechanical stimuli
that mimic fertilization. The lab scientists understood the prohibition
of federal funding for embryos, but they were frustrated that
parthenotes were lumped in with embryos, especially given their
scientific differences, because the ability to use human parthenotes
would significantly improve their understanding of egg maturation in
humans. We were surprised to learn about the ban on parthenote research,
and somewhat chagrined to recognize how little we knew about the
Dickey-Wicker Amendment. Our discussion with the scientists of why a
parthenote was legally and ethically equated to an embryo in the
Dickey-Wicker Amendment began the first of several joint research
projects. (1)

Many have noted the importance of multidisciplinary work, and here
we describe how such work--well, worked. We also show how our
postdoctoral fellowships could be used as a model for the postgraduate
training of others in medical humanities and bioethics. But first, a bit
about our backgrounds, because our multidisciplinary work is not just
about being embedded with scientists, but also about coming at medical
humanities and bioethics from different disciplines. Lisa approaches her
work from a philosophical background, with careful attention to power
dynamics that can lead to health care inequities and injustices. Sarah
comes at her work from a historical perspective, looking at how an issue
developed in order to contextualize ethical issues and frame questions
being asked today. Yet given that we both work in the broader field of
medical humanities and bioethics, our work by its very nature is
multidisciplinary. Furthermore, we are both interested in reproductive
health and how the issues brought forward and the questions being asked
are influenced by and influence the larger culture. We learn from each
other the importance of historic contextualization and philosophical
inquiry, and we join our work with the work in the lab.

By being embedded in the lab, we can both learn more about
reproductive science and enable scientists in the lab to think about
their work away from the bench. We discuss the differences between the
scientific process and the historical and ethical research processes, as
well as the similarities among the disciplines. We learn about the
science of ovaries, ovarian follicles, eggs, embryos, and
parthenogenesis, which furthers our ability to carefully analyze the
intricacies of reproductive technologies. The scientists learn about the
legal, historical, and ethical parameters of the science, providing them
a useful context for understanding how and why their work is seen as it
is by those outside reproductive science. It is this embedded nature of
our fellowship that we suggest would make for a strong fellowship
training in medical humanities and bioethics, for it not only provides a
greater understanding of science for us, but also engenders
multidisciplinary research projects that few of us had contemplated,
like the one on the Dickey-Wicker Amendment.

Through these intellectual exchanges, we encounter the difficulty
of talking across disciplines. To speak to each other, we were forced to
develop, as one of our mentors has termed it, a "common
language." Without compromising complexity, we had to construct a
way of expressing ourselves and our ideas in a way that made sense to
the scientists, and vice versa. Without this common language, scientists
sometimes do not see the value of perspectives from the medical
humanities and bioethics, at least in our experience. Part of the reason
for this (we learned from the reproductive scientists in our lab) is
their sense that the medical humanities and bioethics voice is generally
negative, amounting to nothing more than finger wagging. By working in
the lab and providing suggestions of different ways to look at a topic
or different questions to ask, we were able to provide examples of a
constructive voice from bioethics and medical humanities.

But reproductive scientists also often hear critical voices from
the public. By interacting with each other in the lab, we are able to
begin to discuss perceptions and help contextualize why reproductive
science is often met with such visceral reactions by nonscientists. In
so doing, we also explored reproductive scientists' own visceral
reactions to critiques of their work. For example, for the summer's
brown bag discussion group, we selected and led the discussion on Emily
Martin's article, "The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has
Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles." As
the title suggests, Martin describes how gender roles are often
projected onto reproductive biology, resulting in the portrayal of eggs
as passive and of sperm as active. We were surprised by some of the
scientists' negative reaction to this article. Upon further
discussion, we realized that many of the scientists felt that Martin was
chastising them, and we were able to move past the tone of the article
to elicit its more significant content. Only by breaking down
Martin's argument into a common language were some of the
scientists able to understand and appreciate her claims. In the end, the
discussion of Martin's article was a success because the scientists
grew more aware of the gendered language in reproductive biology and
made a choice to avoid it. Moreover, the discussion led to
multidisciplinary research projects on the topic, such as an examination
of how science textbooks from middle school through medical school
employ gendered language.

We believe the strength of our embedded fellowship is in large part
due to our ability to effectively communicate with each other through a
common language. We learned to convey our work and its value in a way
that makes sense to these scientists. The credit is not just ours,
however; the scientists also strove to construct a common language. In
fact, the science contribution started long before we worked together.
It began when the principal investigator of the grant, Teresa K.
Woodruff, recognized the importance of incorporating humanities and
social science projects into the overall project. Part of doing this
included embedding medical humanities and bioethics postdoctoral fellows
in the lab, per the suggestion of Laurie Zoloth. Teresa understood that
such an arrangement would encourage more interaction between scientists
and humanists, which would lead to multidisciplinary projects. It also
showed an appreciation for the value of thinking about science and
technology beyond the bench. Putting scientists and humanists "on
the same team"--having them work for the same organization to
achieve similar, or at least related, goals--established a level of
camaraderie and trust from the get-go, thereby creating an environment
that would allow professional relationships and projects across
disciplines to flourish.

While the success of our fellowships relies in part on the
personality of the scientists whose lab we are in, our lab can still be
seen as a model from which to copy future embedded fellowships in
medical humanities and bioethics. The importance of this to the future
of medical humanities and bioethics is clear. As academic disciplines
become increasingly technical, we must be able to understand each other
to have meaningful dialogue--something that is particularly helpful if
ethical problems arise and only possible through a common language. By
establishing medical humanities and bioethics postdoctoral fellowships
embedded in scientists' laboratories, multidisciplinary work--and,
perhaps more importantly, a common language--will hopefully emerge.

Lisa Campo-Engelstein earned a Ph.D. at Michigan State University
in philosophy specializing in bioethics, feminist theory, and
social/political justice. When she cowrote this article, she was a
senior research fellow in medical humanities at the Oncofertility
Consortium, Northwestern University FeinbergSchool of Medicine, where
she examined ethical issues in the areas of reproductive technologies,
cancer, and women's health. She will continue analyzing these
issues in her new position as an assistant professor at Alden March
Bioethics Institute, Albany Medical College. She coedited Oncofertility:
Ethical, Legal, Social, and Medical Perspectives (Springer, 2010), and
her work has appeared in Science, the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the
Journal of Medical Ethics, and the American Journal of Bioethics.

Sarah B. Rodriguez earned her Master of Arts in the history of
science and medicine from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her
Ph.D. in societal and preventive medicine from the University of
Nebraska Medical Center. She was a senior research fellow in medical
humanities at the Oncofertility Consortium when she cowrote this
article; she is now a postdoctoral fellow in medical humanities and
bioethics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. She is
interested in the history of women's sexual and reproductive
health, and especially in how this history frames current discussions.
She coedited Oncofertility: Ethical, Legal, Social, and Medical
Perspectives (Springer, 2010) and her work has appeared in Science, the
American Journal of Bioethics, and the Journal of the History of
Medicine and Allied Sciences.